Why Facebook can be depressing, and what you can do about that

Digital technology and social media are exacerbating the prevalence of depression, found researchers at the University of Houston who linked Facebook use to symptoms of depression in a new study published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

Photo: Peter Dazeley, Getty Images

A couple of years ago, my little sister decided not to go to a big school dance because she didn't have a date. She told me she was devastated about it. And the next day, seeing her friends' Facebook pictures from the dance made her feel even worse.

I'm pursuing my Ph.D. in social psychology, so naturally, I wondered: How often does Facebook have that effect on people? And why do we feel that way after spending time on Facebook?

With colleagues from the University of Houston and Palo Alto University, I set out to answer those questions. We conducted two studies using a sample of more than 300 American university students. Overall, we found that the more time you spend on Facebook, the more likely you are to experience depressive symptoms due to social comparison. (We published our results recently in "Seeing Everyone Else's Highlight Reels: How Facebook Usage Is Linked to Depressive Symptoms" in The Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.)

Why, you might wonder, do we even compare ourselves to other people at all? In the 1950s, acclaimed social psychologist Leon Festinger proposed that individuals have an innate desire to see how we measure up to our peers on dimensions we deem personally important; it's a way to evaluate how well we are doing. Those social comparisons can convey important information, such as whether we are on track in terms of our achievements, or that we are behind and need to put in the effort to catch up.

Maybe that's why my sister couldn't just enjoy all those photos of her girlfriends blissfully dancing the night away: The photos perhaps made her feel that she wasn't as popular as her friends.

In the digital age, it's likely that we're engaging in social comparison more than ever before. Thanks to social-networking sites, such as Facebook, we are inundated with a constant stream of information and photos about family members, friends, and acquaintances.

Moreover, the information we receive about people can be quite jarring, especially if it's news that we didn't anticipate. For instance, if you've just gone through a breakup, it can be shocking to learn that your awkward friend from high school just got engaged.

Of course, no one wants to look bad in front of others. Thus, when posting, people tend to present themselves positively, mentioning the good aspects of their lives while leaving out the bad. However, if we compare ourselves to our friends' "highlight reels," instead of to their actual lives, our own lives will seem mundane.

Unfortunately, our social comparison processes occur automatically, often out the realm of our control. We also can't predict when we will find ourselves engaging in social comparison because we never know what our Facebook friends will post. But it may help to bear in mind that what we're seeing are carefully crafted, positively distorted pictures of our friends' lives.

Being on Facebook should generally be a positive experience; it was created to entertain us and connect us to each other. But be aware of your Facebook use: If you find yourself feeling increasingly bad after viewing your friends' exotic vacation photos, ecstatic engagement announcements, photos of happy babies, or posts about their latest promotion, it's time to take stock and, possibly, step away from the keyboard.

Mai-Ly Steers is a doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of Houston.